occasionally bombarding the headquarters in an irregular manner

February 19, 2013

deadpan spoofs

The
online version of China's Communist party
newspaper has hailed a report by The Onion naming North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un as
the sexiest man alive – not realising it is satire...

... It
is not the first time a state-run Chinese newspaper has fallen for a fictional
report by The Onion. In 2002, the Beijing Evening News, one of the capital
city's biggest tabloids at the time, published as news the fictional account
that the US Congress wanted a new building and that it might leave Washington. The
Onion article was a deadpan spoof of the way sports teams threaten to leave
cities in order to get new stadiums.

And here’s today’s doofus. Those Komedy Kommunists just don’t get the freewheeling
word of internet satire, unlike the US Senate Minority Leader. But at least there's a bright line here. The first sucker was some random People's Daily functionary, and the second is someone who has real influence over the policy of the world's ranking superpower.